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I initially thought SE had made the decision to develop a mobile game based on vana'diel which would offer micro-transactions and allow SE to maintain FFXI as a F2P service while still making (potentially more) profit. You guys know my glass is always half full. I'm honestly more interested in seeing how this plays out than I am about 3.0 or even FFXV to be honest Smiley: tongue
I think I've pretty much kinda given up on the Final Fantasy series since about FF9 or thereabouts.
FF7 was awesome in gameplay and not too shabby in storyline (though I don't worship it like some people do...), but the graphics were kinda horrible compared to 8 and 9.
FF8 had this wonky system I really really did not like (the whole junction thing, the removal of armor, how they handled weapons), the whole farming for magic and how long it took constantly Drawing magic out of enemies got old fast and really detracted from the experience. The storyline and music was good though!
FF9 I think was the last "awesome" FF game, sadly. They kept mostly true to the old Final Fantasy games in the terms of gameplay -- tried and true ATB system, tried-and-true magic/MP system, though the "learn new spells from equipment" was a bit new, but the concept wasn't; it kinda had an Esper-like feel to it, only there were actual balancing limits this time around (rather than everybody can be anything and know every spell in FF6).
FFX had an OK story, the combat wasn't too bad, I actually rather liked the idea of having time to plan your moves, but the Sphere Grid system was kinda a black mark for me. I didn't like it all that well, and I
really really REALLY disliked the whole "you have to swap in everybody on every fight or someone starts falling behind". That got really old, having to switch in every single party member on every single battle to keep everybody caught up, just so they could take at least 1 action per battle. If it hadn't been for that, I could have enjoyed that game a lot more.
X-2, meh. I didn't really like where that one went. They went back to ATB which was cool and they put a nice spin on it, but I really didn't like the theme of it and some of the minigames (the massage... ugh.....) just didn't say "Final Fantasy" to me.
FFXI and XIV I won't talk about for obvious reasons: they are MMOs.
FF12, the storyline was kinda 'meh'... it wasn't bad, but it didn't strike me as anything particularly good either. I didn't really like the Gambit system; I felt it kinda cheapened the game that you could program the game to play for you, and the free-roam thing, and the farming aspect of it made it feel more like an MMO that was played Single-player than anything.
FF13 and 13-2 I have on my Steam, but I haven't gotten around to doing them yet, but I've heard that at least 13 is ridiculously linear, where you're basically limited to one singular path to take.
It seems Technology caused SE to get distracted from what made Final Fantasy awesome -- we used to have great storylines (FF4 is still one of my favorites!), the battle was fun and not overly complicated but yet allowed choices (though they got ridiculous with FF6 where everybody could cast every spell and by the end of the game, you had an invincible group no matter which of the gazillion characters were in your group at the time), and there were always neat dungeons to explore, locales to see, and sometimes there were side-quests and things to do off to the side.
It seems as technology marches on, they wanna make more flashy visuals during battle, they wanna make it more realistic looking, more voice acting (anyone remember Tidus's laughing scene? That's what they made Mute buttons for). I never felt in any FF leading up to and including 9, that I ever needed Voice Acting. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but meh.
I miss the old formula, but I know it isn't coming back. But then I suppose that's why someone made RPGMaker, lol.
EDIT: On that note, RPGMaker, I've seen at least one ridiculously awesome (but short) game called Skyborn (available on Steam), where you have an RPGMaker-style battle system that has actual Hate/Threat/Enmity systems built-in. I thought that was ridiculously awesome and the storyline was actually decent (if a bit short) too.
Edited, Apr 12th 2015 7:31am by Lyrailis